


Guilt (Growing Up Happens to Everyone)

by lucdarling



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Emotional Baggage, F/M, Future Fic, Getting to Know Each Other, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Step-Sibling Incest, Step-siblings, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:48:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25181995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucdarling/pseuds/lucdarling
Summary: The Max in his faded memories is always bright and fierce, unbowed and innocent in her youth.Everyone has to grow up someday.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Billy Hargrove/Maxine "Max" Mayfield, Susan Hargrove & Maxine "Max" Mayfield
Comments: 22
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [I Don't Want To Hurt You...](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25140136) by [stratton1988](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stratton1988/pseuds/stratton1988). 



> Inspired by two lines from the fic linked above:  
>  _“I think about you all the time.” She whispered._  
>  _He looked at her staring at him. “Guilt will do that to you.”_

After he can walk without gasping for breath and stops reaching for a pack of Marlboro Reds that would set his recovery back, Billy leaves town.

He looks at his reflection in the rearview mirror of the Camaro, grateful the title was only in his name. He tells himself he isn't a coward as the wheels take him past the Now Leaving Hawkins signpost. He doesn’t lose sleep over who gets left behind.

He opens a shop in a California town so small it’s barely on the map, works for a grizzled mechanic two towns away to actually pay the bills.

A woman with red hair walks in one day and time stands still. Her face is older but the bright blue eyes are still the same.

"Hargrove's, huh?" Her voice is soft, something wistful in the tone. "Named for anyone you know?"

"Thought I'd make something better of the name," Billy says, voice just as quiet. He steps out from behind the counter, leans against it and wonders if she'll slap him, if she'll hug him.

"How you been, Maxine?"

She stares at him for a long moment. He can feel her eyes take in his shorter hair, the open shirt he wears with scars on display and board shorts like the surfer he is once again. She rushes over to throw her arms around him after she’s had her fill. A hug it is, he probably should have guessed. Max has lost the wiry strength of youth and her body is that of a woman where they press against each other.

Billy hugs her back and he isn't sure who's more surprised.

"I'm good," Max says with a little laugh, drawing back to put space between them. She dashes at her eyes and Billy pretends not to notice. "You?"

"Great, actually."

"Yeah?" She sounds pleased about that. "So you own this place?" Her hand rises, sweeps around in a wide gesture to encompass the whole shop.

"It's small, but it's mine. Not really worth it, town's too small for anything like a steady business but I like it. It's mine." His grin is a little too sharp to be only the pride that comes with owning your own business, but he knows Max understands.

"I'm glad," she sweeps a piece of red hair behind her ear and looks nervous. The expression sits wrong on her face, the Max in his faded memories is always bright and fierce, unbowed and innocent in her youth.

Everyone has to grow up someday.

"I was a kid when you left, I never realized-" she trails off and looks at the floor.

Billy sighs. "I really don't want a trip down memory lane, not today and not ever." He says firmly and Max shakes her head, hair flying like she's a teenager again.

"I need a smoke," she frowns and heads toward the front door. Her hand is already digging through the little purse hanging from her shoulder. Billy follows her onto the sidewalk to stand in the shade of the awning and waves away the offer when it’s tilted in his direction.

She lights it with a practiced hand and inhales. Billy is taken back to his own teenage years watching her exhale, smoke carried by the wind away from them. He doesn't ask when she started, if she found an old pack of his or bought her own. His eyes catch on what can only be his pendant around her neck and his fingers itch to touch the metal warmed by her body.

"I thought about you a lot," Max confesses after a few moments of silence. The cigarette is half gone and her eyes don't leave his. Billy blinks as the words register. "I'm glad you're happier now."

"Guilt will do that to you," Billy shrugs, eyes drifting from her face to the chipped navy nail polish. "Now that you've seen I'm alive, satisfied your curiosity, you gonna fuck off?" It sounds harsh but they speak the same language. They’re both born of cruel words and swift fists, tied together by a man who doesn’t deserve the appellation of dad. It doesn't negate the fact that just seeing Max, years later with a scar at her temple and shadows in her eyes, makes him certain that sleep will be hard to come by for the next few nights.

"I might," she taps the ash off and inhales again. An exhale, gathering her thoughts. "I left at eighteen, just like you."

"How'd your mom take that?" Guess they're doing this, despite his earlier words and the most fervent desire to never spend another minute of his life on the asshole who gave him his last name.

"She didn't try to stop me," Max answers and there's a world of meaning in her voice. Billy doesn't need a map to read between the lines. "I haven't spoken to her in a few years."

"You want dinner?" Billy asks instead, swallowing back other words that a better son might ask. He's never known how to be good. His ribs ache with phantom pain that gets stronger the more time they spend on this subject. "There's an In-N-Out a few towns over, too."

"I've been on the West Coast for a year now," Max says, which isn’t a rejection of getting food with him.

"Right," Billy shakes his head, runs a hand through the curls he still maintains though they're sun-bleached and don’t fall as far as his shoulders anymore. "You still with that kid from before?"

Max drops the filter to the ground, steps on it with a practiced twist of her heel. Her laugh is a hollow sound that rings in his ears. "Lucas and I tried, all through high school and the first year of college. He was too nice."

Billy grunts at the confession. He sees how that could be true, vaguely remembers the besotted expression on the kid’s face any time he looked at Max when she had her back turned. She was always too much for any of those Midwestern corn-fed kids, wild and running free whenever she saw the chance.

“So you came out here alone?”

“Followed a guy,” Max is on his heels when he heads back inside. She takes his place propping up the counter as he starts his routine to close the shop up. “It didn’t last. We Mayfields really know how to pick ‘em.” She laughs again, bitter this time. Her hands brush over her stomach once, twice and flutter away to rest at her sides. He recognizes the movement from her mother, from his own mother when he was too small to understand, wonders if it’s passed down to all women everywhere across the world who survive.

Billy watches and doesn’t say a word, counts the cash in the drawer quickly and writes the tally down on the piece of paper under the counter. There’s a bank down the street but the tally hardly changes from week to week, it’s not a large enough number to interrupt this reunion.

“So, dinner? I’ll even buy,” he coaxes with a smirk. Max nods, adjusts her purse strap. “Don’t know you anymore, if I ever did.” He doesn’t touch her shoulder to lead her out the door but he thinks about it. “I was a shit brother, Max. I never apologized for that, probably should have.”

“I didn’t make it easy,” Max accepts his words and offers up her own. “I’m sorry for my part, what I caused being young and dumb. I get it now.” She swallows, repeats her words from earlier. “I thought about you a lot.” She sways into him as he locks up, smells like smoke and a hint of perfume when their bodies briefly collide.

Billy gives her a small smile and listens to her squeal of surprise at seeing his car again parked around the corner.

“I can’t believe you still have this! I can’t believe she runs!” Max’s delight is something he soaks in, wants to capture and hold close for lonely nights. She laughs, the sound of someone free and happy, when the engine turns over with a familiar roar. Billy wants to bottle that sound too.

They speed down the highway, slamming to a stop at a diner farther away than Billy originally planned. Driving with a red haired spitfire in the passenger seat was too familiar, something sweet and fizzy burning in his veins when he looked over at her. It’s like no time has passed at all except for the lines carved on their faces, into their bodies.

Her order hasn’t changed, he’s gratified to see. Still the same girl-turned-woman dipping french fries into chocolate shakes; Billy wonders if she remembers he was the one to teach her that.

“What are you doing for work?” The words are clumsy in his mouth, a foreign tongue. It’s a common question to anyone new, even the tourists who duck into his shop, but this time Billy thinks he cares about the answer.

“Technical writer and freelance editor, as the occasion calls for.” Max traces patterns in the sugar grains someone spilled on the table before they took it. “The publishing house is somewhere in the Valley but they don’t care where I am. I used to travel a lot, after.” Her hands flutter again and Billy’s lips thin.

He throws out city names instead of prying for answers he doesn’t want and lets Max tell him about the sights, the people, the smell of an open-air market in a place he can’t find on a map. He can’t stand crowds now, if he ever could. He’s always been alone.

“I’m done wandering, though.” Max brings him out of his thoughts.

“Sticking around here?”

“If you want,” Max smiles again and looks up at him. He can see the little girl she used to be, the one who begged to be tossed into the breaking waves and the teenager who snarled back in the face of his anger. The woman before him is someone new, someone Billy thinks he could learn to love.

“I think I’d like that.”

He drives her back to where she’s staying, raises an eyebrow at the shabbiness. “Really?”

Max holds her purse close, gives a wan smile. “It’s enough to get by until I find something on the market. Most of my job can be done in coffee shops or libraries.”

“I have a couch in better condition than this death trap,” Billy beckons her back into the car. “Pay for your room and get your shit together.” He parks next to one of the rentals in the lot, appraises it with a practiced eye. It’s been years since he’s been in a fist fight but his jaw clenches just the same as Max comes out of the motel with two duffle bags and a laptop case. This scene is familiar too.

“This it?” He calls out, bridges the distance between them with long steps to take the larger bag.

“I travel light,” Max says with a quicksilver grin, something sad on the edges. Billy’s seen something similar in the mirror a time or three.

“Running from something?” he inquires without much feeling in the words, popping the trunk and tossing the duffle on top of the spare tire.

“Not any longer,” Max throws her bags in and slams it shut. Conversation over.

They ride in silence, windows down to listen to the ocean.

Billy drives them to his one bedroom a few blocks from the beach’s public access point, light blue paint nearly holding up in the salt air.

“Cute,” Max proclaims as the Camaro pulls into the garage.

“It’s mine too,” Billy bares his teeth and cuts the engine. Max smirks back, reaches for the laptop bag at her feet.

“Water, or something harder?” he asks once she’s sitting on his couch, peering at everything but not standing up to look closer. The setting sun bathes her in golds and orange but also highlights the shadows.

“Glad to see you didn’t give up drinking too.” Max snarks. “Surprise me.”

He pours her a vodka with a twist, makes himself one too. She takes it and sips, pleasure crossing her features. He sits in the armchair that came with the couch as a set, waving off her words of thanks. It’s just a drink.

“I’m off tomorrow,” Billy tells her while he scans the coffee table for the tv remote. “We can do something if you want.”

They watch the news, letting other people’s voices fill the space between them.

Max speaks during a commercial. “I promise I won’t wake you up at the crack of dawn,” she smiles a little guiltily, something youthful in her hardened features. Billy groans in remembrance.

“Do not even think about it, you hellion. I’ll do worse than a pillow to the face this time.”

Max drains her glass and sets it on the end table at the end of the news program. Billy picks it up as he makes his way to the kitchen, spending the next few minutes washing his dishes from the morning as well as their drink glasses. It looks unusual, seeing two glasses on the drying rack instead of one. It looks right, and Billy thinks maybe he’s ready to stop being alone.

“Bathroom’s down the hall,” he calls out as he heads into his bedroom, already stripping off his shirt.

“Found it, thanks.” Max says a moment later, standing in his bedroom doorway. Her eyes linger on his muscles. “You have like, three doors in the entire place.” The oversized shirt she must be planning to wear to bed hits her at mid-thigh. Her skin is pale and freckled.

Billy tells himself not to look for too long, no matter that she’s a woman now and they’re strangers to each other.

“You really gonna make me take the couch?” Max steps closer to him and Billy stands very still in the middle of his bedroom. “Like you haven’t been making eyes at me since I walked into your shop.”

She puts her arms over his shoulders, links her hands against the back of his neck. Her fingers are slim and cool.

“We don’t know each other,” Billy says in a voice deeper than usual.

“Exactly,” Max smiles wickedly and pushes up on her toes to brush a kiss over his mouth. He follows her back down, only breaking apart to take a breath once it’s been too long.

Max’s eyes are closed. The open slowly when Billy thumbs at the line of her jaw. “Yes,” she says to the question hanging in the air. Maybe it’s always been there and they just never noticed, too worried about surviving. Billy bends to kiss her again, following her down to his bed.

He pushes her shirt up, revealing her stomach and breasts. They keep kissing as their hands learn these new bodies that they have, the ones that don’t match sepia-toned memories. Max’s hands run over old scars she earned him and he doesn’t flinch away. They don’t hold the same pain they used to.

He slides into her in a long slow push once her thighs part. She sighs beneath him, body relaxing into the stretch as he holds still, holds himself above her.

“You okay?” Billy isn’t one for tender promises in the dark but this is Max. It’s different.

“It’s good.” Her voice is warm, huskier than when she sat across from him at the diner booth under fluorescent lights.

It’s a slow joining, both of them agreeing without words to take their time. They keep kissing, breathing the same air as he thrusts in long strokes. Her orgasm seems to be a surprise when it comes, breaking over her like the crest of a slowly building wave that swallows her whole. She’s beautiful in his bed. He follows soon after, head against her breast as his hips stutter and jerk.

Max keeps her hand in his curls when he pushes himself up, off of her body. He’s still in her, softening. She runs her fingers through his hair, tugging at the curls and scratching at his scalp with gentle movements his body has never seen or allowed. 

Billy doesn’t want to disentangle himself, doesn’t want this to end. He finds the strength to pull out, petting her side in silent apology when she hisses. A short trip down the hall and Billy’s back with a damp washcloth, cleaning her up first before wiping at himself and the mess.

She moves over to make room for him in his own bed. He lies down but doesn’t pull her close, isn’t sure they can be those people even after tonight.

“Thank you,” Max says quietly. He doesn’t ask for what, not certain he wants to know. Billy finds her hand in the dark, links their fingers together. The morning, and whatever comes after, will find them soon enough.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will not be the chapter most of you (any?) expected, but it's what came out.

The next year or so isn't idyllic, two strangers learning to live in the same space, but it was miles better than it used to be. Max works from home and coffee shops as she desires. Sometimes she sits in Billy's shop with him, which sees five people on a good day. They learn to laugh again, at each other and the world. Around the same time that Max thinks life is pretty okay, there's a knock at the door.

Max keeps a portion of her attention on the officers, most of it dedicated to watching the way Billy sinks into the couch cushions like he can disappear if he tries hard enough. Neither of them are one for the blue uniforms, too many times they’ve shown up at the front door and done nothing. They’re still doing nothing, only sitting opposite Billy and speaking too quietly for her to eavesdrop.

“Would you excuse me? I think we’ve just received some bad news,” Max says to her boss on the other end of the phone. She waits a moment for the words to register, the pleasantries and ritual words of understanding to make their way across the line. She hangs up without saying goodbye and knows it will be excused just as her deadlines have been pushed back without having to ask.

The officers show themselves out, hats in hand.

Billy sits, unmoving before he finds the energy from somewhere deep within to become a hurricane. Max watches from her seat with the phone still in her hand, its dial tone a low buzz in her ear. She watches his destruction, sees the years slip away and his hair lengthen to that 80s mullet, and waits. She has weathered worse storms.

He stops in the middle of the room, one hand clenched in his shorn curls. Billy looks small, surrounded by the debris of the life he’s built littering the floor. Something crunches when Max stands and crosses the room. She doesn’t touch him.

“You’re not going alone,” Max says quietly. Not to face his demons. Not the one they share.

The funeral is small. A handful of work colleagues with greying hair, a few people in hospital scrubs and the three of them. Max and Billy stand behind the others in the back, Billy in a suit he bought just before they left California. Max sweats in a black dress because Hawkins is small and it would raise eyebrows if she wore something else. She doesn’t owe her mother anything but wears it just the same. There were good times, some nice memories, Max admits to herself as the coffin lowers. They’re all overlaid with the haze that comes with holding your breath too long, the bright sharp pain of a body pushed into a bookshelf.

The priest drones on with more of the same lies that everyone is given in death, and Max clutches Billy’s hand in hers. She doesn’t know who holds on tighter.

Susan, standing at the front, a widow now, weeps silently. Max wonders how long it took for her to master that, knows that she was too young herself when she had to learn.

The people she doesn’t recognize trickle away, moving slowly back to their lives. Soon enough it’s only the three of them left standing before the mound of dirt waiting to be pushed on top. The gravestone will be etched and put in a week from now. Max is glad she doesn’t have to read whatever epitaph was picked, something false that would no doubt burn her eyes.

“You came,” Susan’s voice is hushed, just like it always is in Max’s memories. Her eyes look between the two of them, the line on her brow easing as she drinks them both in. “You both came.”

She moves forward, kitten heels sinking into the grass. Max draws back, uncertain about this reunion. It’s too public, it’s too soon, she doesn’t know how to feel. Something flickers in her heart when Billy leans forward, his broad shoulder blocking her from view. He’s still protecting her, even now.

Susan gets the unspoken message and stops moving. She and Billy stare at each other, so much between them that Max can only guess at. Max steps out of his shadow, standing on her own two feet. She doesn’t let go of Billy’s hand.

“I need to do anything?” His voice is a now-familiar low rumble but Susan gives a start to hear it. Max wonders if it matches the voice in her memories, or if she even thought about him at all. They never said his name, after he left Hawkins. Max had to carry it alone for reasons she hardly understood and can’t name, even now.

Susan’s hands twist together, a nervous motion that Max can’t remember when her mother started. “There are some things,” she coughs and looks at them, then away. “You should go through them.”

“Alright,” and a shrug. A grin, saccharine and false, crosses his face. It’s just another reminder of all those years before. Billy’s always been a better actor than Max, who lets the emotions flush her skin. She never quite managed to affect the bored sneer Billy favors.

It’s strange to drive down familiar roads but do so behind the wheel of a rental car. If they’d driven out in the Camaro Max thought they might never escape. She had voiced that thought before they left and Billy had laughed, not disagreeing. They’d bought plane tickets instead. To do otherwise would be too much history repeating itself, quicksand sucking them both in after they fought so hard to be free.

The house on Cherry Lane hasn’t changed in the years they’ve both been away. It’s still dirty, tired and sagging like the rest. Max feels a familiar warning coil in her gut as she follows Billy up the stairs from the garage to the kitchen. She reminds herself there’s nothing to fear, Neil is gone and truly buried. The back door hinges don’t squeak any longer and it surprises her.

Billy pauses in the doorway of the master bedroom, steeling himself. Max and Susan watch from the kitchen. He shuts the door behind him, always one to be alone in his pain.

Max drifts from room to room, ending up in her old bedroom. The closet door is half-open and there are boxes as high as her waist. She doesn’t recognize the color on the walls, or the bedspread. It’s been years and Max doesn’t know why she still expected it to be unchanged, when she herself isn’t the same.

“I kept everything,” her mother says from the doorway. She doesn’t look at Max. “Just in case.”

Max grits her teeth, rolls her shoulders back. She reminds herself she didn’t come for a fight, she came for her brother.

“I’ll put some coffee on.” Her mother breaks the silence when it stretches too long, alway so eager to keep the peace. “Join me when you’re ready.” She turns and Max stares at her back as she walks away. Max sees an older woman, red hair dull and shot through with silver. She’s frail.

Max sits on the edge of the bed that used to be hers. She takes a deep breath and then another, hands pressed to her face.

She doesn’t need anything from here. She doesn’t need to make herself fit like a puzzle piece. She can leave at any time.

Max still finds herself sitting at the kitchen table moments later, hands wrapped around a coffee mug that she doesn’t recognize. She wonders if there is any dishware left from her childhood, how much her mother has spent in replacing it.

“Do you remember-” her mother says for the hundredth time and Max traps a scream behind her teeth. It’s not about her, it’s not.

The words burst out anyway. Max has never been good at holding her tongue. “Do I remember?” She laughs, and it’s a wild sound, too loud in the dimly lit kitchen. “Does the good outweigh the bad, for you? Is that enough?”

“He wasn’t himself,” Susan protests quietly. “Not in the end.” Her knuckles are white around her mug. Max wonders where this spine was when she needed it, when Billy needed it.

Max doesn’t have a chance to rebut because the bedroom door opens. Billy stands there, leather jacket held over one arm. He holds it up with a smirk that’s too big to be real.

“The number of times he screamed at me for looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger and I find this in his closet? The goddamn hypocrite.” Max stares at the leather jacket as he throws it on the chair. She can’t find any words.

“He wasn’t himself, not in the end.” Susan commits to her story as if she doesn’t dare deviate. Max watches her blink back tears and wonders where her own are, if they’ll ever come.

“None of us were ourselves, Susie Q.” Billy says. He stops himself from getting in her face like he would have if he were eighteen again. It’s an effort and he trembles with the force of it. “Not under his roof.” A shadow crosses his face, something wistful Max thinks. “I hope you can find yourself now.”

They start to talk in low voices, not excluding Max but she can’t hear them over the roaring in her ears as she thinks about being a rat in a maze, wondering if she truly escaped if she just ended up back here. Maybe Hawkins only knows how to break people.

“I’ll be back,” she announces and doesn’t wait for a reaction as she grabs her purse from the kitchen counter. If they’d come in through the front door, she would have put it on the hallway table. She’s surprised it hasn’t broken like so many other things.

The first inhale, the rush of nicotine calms her down a little as she knew it would. Max stares at the neighbor’s yards, doesn’t know how many of them are still here. She knows why none of them intervened, and the words respect and responsibility sit sour in her stomach. The door opens behind her. She twirls the car keys in her hand, but doesn't remember when she picked them up.

Max doesn’t wait to see who it is, no response held on the tip of her tongue when she’s drowning in humid air and everything is too bright. She walks down the cracked drive and slides into the rental car without a word. It smells new and plastic; Max can’t tell in the sunlight if the person in the doorway has blond or red hair. She supposes it doesn’t matter and pulls away from the house on Cherry Lane with her foot on the gas.

She drives around Hawkins, taking turns and shortcuts through the neighborhood that Max forgot she knew. There are still bicycles by the basement door of what used to be the Wheelers, now belonging to some other child or children who haven’t known fear. The car takes her past the old Sinclair house, who moved away shortly after Erica had started high school in order to give her an academic challenge. Dustin’s house is unchanged, and it might be Mrs. Henderson behind the twitching curtains, but Max doesn’t stop to say hello. The Byers’ former house is even more overgrown, half collapsed and left to ruin. She pulls a textbook three point turn on the gravel and chokes on her memories. Max ends up in what passes for downtown Hawkins, squat brick buildings left over from yesteryear. Nothing and everything has changed.

She enters the store that will always be Melvald’s, uncaring that some other name is emblazoned on the sign above the door. It’s still set up the same, a new tile floor but the lights still buzz above her head. The girl at the counter is fresh-faced and innocent. Max looks at her and remembers Joyce Byers, feels every one of her own years. Her walk around the store is aimless though she purchases a can of Coca-Cola just for the fond laugh that bubbles out of her when she spies it in the refrigerated section. There’s no trace of New Coke to be seen.

Max drives back to Cherry Lane, feeling more settled in herself with the soda half-drunk in the cup holder. There’s nothing to trap her here.

“Ready to go?” Billy has a box under his arm and his eyes are red. Susan stands in the doorway and watches. She doesn’t wave goodbye. Max pretends not to notice, flicks on the radio.

“All the way to California,” Max smirks and Billy shuts the car door.


End file.
